Wes Copeland Reclaims His ‘Donkey Kong’ World Record With A Near-Perfect Game

Even though you spent half your childhood putzing around with arcade games with nothing to show for it, there are people in the world who are so good at decades-old games that they make headlines with incredible feats of skill. Not only did gamer Wes Copeland reclaim the Donkey Kong world record that he lost in April of this year, but he did so with a near-perfect game that crushed the closest competitor in the rankings. He was the first person to ever score even 1.1 million points in a game, and now he has bested that by scoring 1,218,000 this time, a full 18,000 points past his personal goal of 1.2 million.

Copeland’s performance is so amazing, in fact, that he says that he is officially retiring from competition since he doesn’t believe there is anywhere to go but down again. Per the video above, the game took over three hours to compete, and not a single life was lost the entire time. Yours truly can’t even make it through three levels without eating it, let alone three hours.

The aforementioned previous arcade record set in April 2016 by Robbie Lakeman is now in second by 28,200 points. Even though Lakeman is also a world-class player, he is more or less throwing in the towel on ever being able to top this latest development. As Polygon reports, Lakeman responded to Copeland’s retirement Facebook post with his own announcement.

“This will be my last record score,” Copeland wrote on Facebook. “I don’t believe I can put up a game any higher than this.” Copeland had set 1.2 million as his ultimate goal in Donkey Kong, and said he’d retire from competition if he could reach that.

This also may mean the end of the Donkey Kong world record hunt across the board. Lakeman, responding to Copeland, said “I’m not lucky enough. Good enough, but not lucky enough.”

Which means that after years – nay decades – of world record attempts and the top spot constantly switching hands every few days or months the fight to be the Donkey Kong world record holder might finally end with Copeland as king of the mountain. Unless some after-school DK master is a secret prodigy and can accomplish a 100% perfect game someday, this looks to be the end.